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Human Rights in Nicaragua

Nicaragua, a country in the heart of Central America, is ruled by President Daniel Ortega and by VP Rosario Murillo, his wife.Nicaragua, a country in the heart of Central America, is ruled by President Daniel Ortega and by VP Rosario Murillo, his wife.They are in their third consecutive term, helped by opportunistic reforms and electoral fraud. Nicaragua's population has been suffering many years of electoral fraud, rights restrictions, selective repression, social media and internet censorship of late and the mismanagement of a recent ecological disaster of catastrophic proportions.But the last straw was the enactment -without popular consultation- of a law that affects the country's social security, curtailing the rights of current and future pensioners, in addition to increasing the quotas of current contributors. The people revolted in protest.The protests began discreetly, because we are in a country where anyone who goes out to the streets to criticize the government, however small is the protest, it's crushed by mobs like the JS-19 (a paramilitary arm of the government) and the police itself.When protests began also to emerge recently at the universities, which the Ortegas consider their stronghold, the situation began to get out of control.At this moment there are protests and repression practically all over the country.There has been destruction, aggression and deaths. There is also censorship, several TV channels that reported the attacks were abruptly removed from the air and international journalists who entered the country reported that the authorities confiscated their equipment. Local journalists on the street have been repressed, beaten, assaulted and denigrated.Yesterday I accompanied one of the youth's demonstrations. I participated as a communicator and as a citizen. While I was uploading news about the protest to the digital news website where I publish my cartoons, I could attest the civic attitude of the attendees, even though they had to avoid several anti-riot checkpoints.At the end of the march, a member of the pro-government mobs fired several shots while the police near him did nothing to stop his aggression. Fortunately, there were no injuries.Later in the social media, some pro-government people that recognized me on the streets were denouncing that I was "leading" the youth march, something totally false.This is just a small example of the official campaign to discredit anyone who reports what happens.The president has not show his face since the protests began and Rosario Murillo, the VP and government's spokesperson, in a George Orwell's Big Brother style, likes to name war, "peace", and violence, "love". Nicaragua urges the rest of the world to pay attention to the events occurring here. We do not want to become another Syria.The memory of the war we experienced and suffered in the 1980´s is still fresh in our memory.